Happy Third Birthday to my Little....Big girl.

This past year Cailen has grown leaps and bounds both as a person, in her intellect, socialization, maturity and in her stature. She is just such a wonderful vibrant little singer, songwriter, dancer, story teller, sister, friend and daughter.
She melts me, as she always has. One of the things she has grown to love in the past year, besides Caillou, Curious George and Clifford, is PRINCESSES. Any Barbie is "Princess Barbie" to her and of course there's the marketed on EVERYTHING Disney Princesses. So, I guess naturally she would begin to love all things princess as all things for her age group seem to have princesses on them! Anyway, since her first two b'day parties were kind of gender neutral, I figured it would be nice to have a girly party instead of say celebrating with Caillou, though she would have loved that as well.

Cailen got a tutu, head-dress and wand as an early in the party gift (from Melody) that she wore the whole time. I love it! It made for great pictures.


Being on a tight budget I tried to think how I could make the party more "dazzling" and princess-like and somehow, one day I had the thought to turn the toy room into a mini "ball room" at least in it's decor. So for free, using icicle and blinking xmas lights, hand- me-down lace and frilly blue curtains, faux ivy and flowers I transformed the toy room into a little girl's...dream toy room?...I don't know. All I know is that after the lights were hung at 4 ft high across the whole expanse of the room, Cailen started quietly singing to herself "Thank you mommy and daddy, I loooove it....I love my toy room, it's really great....It's fu--uuuu--uuuu---uuuu-uuuN!" It was heart warming to see in her natural flow of song writing that the decor meant a lot to her. The doorway that was adorned with the blue swag curtain had the blinking lights behind it, you can't tell much in the picture, but to me it felt like glow bugs beckoned you into the room). Sitting on the floor in the mini room, I'll admit, it did have much more appeal to hang out in there. It had a more enchanted feeling if you will. Here are Adriana, Elena and Cailen living it up in the room. :)

So anyway, I made the cake,

I decorated for 3 days, it snowed all day the day of the party (which had me freaking out that I would have to cancel the party). Thank you to all who braved the storm!! There was a Christmas parade in town going past my house during the party which the girls watched through the window-good times! The little princess guests all came in a princess dress of their own, there were crowns and bead necklaces to share. Everyone seemed really happy to be there and everyone looked SO pretty! Cailen was thrilled to have all her princess friends there!

I'm so happy that Cailen loved her party. She STILL talks about it and I know someday she will love the pictures...Or at least I HOPE she does. I love the pictures, and of course as usual, I loved having an excuse to use some creativity. Happy Birthday to my Cailen. I love you! You are an amazing little girl!